Essay On Kate Chopin's Story Of An Hour

In Kate Chopin’s short story “The Story of an Hour,” Mrs. Mallard’s joy after her husband’s death represents the repressed desires of free-spirited women in the late 19th-century patriarchal America. In the beginning of the story, Mrs. Mallard learns that her husband, Brently Mallard, has died in a train accident. After hearing what has happened to her husband, Louise Mallard spends the next hour feeling excitement instead of grief, knowing that for the years to come, she will have “no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature” (Chopin page 2). This quote implies that Mrs. Mallard doesn’t enjoy marriage. The phrase , “blind persistence, “ describes Mrs. Mallard’s …show more content…
This stifles the other person’s freedom. Therefore, Mrs. Mallard and other women of the late nineteenth century most likely didn’t enjoy marriage in general, or they didn’t enjoy their marriage that they had at the moment. Much like Mrs. Mallard’s enjoying the hour of her independence, she enjoys being free. The day before Brently Mallard dies, Mrs. Mallard “[thinks] with a shudder that life might be long” (Chopin page 2), but now she really hopes that she will live longer. Basically, Mrs. Mallard wanted a short life before the death of her husband, but afterwards, she wants a long life. Before her husband’s death, her life was filled with oppression. However, she is free and feels like her life's worth living, which is what causes her eagerness for a long life. Also, the word “shudder” is similar to the word dread, showing how much she hates her old life. Women in the late nineteenth century were told what to do by their husbands and had to stay home working as housewives. Women had no say in anything, so they could not fight